This page is an open discussion and comments thread for the developer.* article "Consider The Total Picture for Offshore Development [1]," by Kelly Nehowig. Please feel free to add your comment or question using the form below.
Editor's note: this discussion page was ported from an old commenting system. The following comment(s) were part of the old discussion page:
This piece makes an execellent point frequently overlooked articles on offshoring: underestimating the value added by properly run internal development teams can be a critical error in a company's offshoring decision. Thanks for your insight and sharing your observations here. When the "buzzword fever" subsides a bit in the U.S., I'm hopeful we'll start to see a more balanced and reality-based picture of offshoring's costs and benefits.
--Posted by Andy Tegethoff @ 01/26/2004 10:15 AM ESTGreat article.
One of the factors you mentioned - the need for very specific, detailed specifications for an offshore team - is very true. Most projects involve a healthy amount of "feature negotiation" and push back and forth up front between customer, steering committee, and development team. We've experienced cultural barriers to this process even with local H-1b teams, where they had a very difficult time challenging or even questioning authority. The team also tended to let unresolvable issues go far too long before a manager was finally able to realize that it was even an issue. We finally had to cancel the project and let the team go.
I can only imagine these factors being even greater of an issue when combined with a location barrier.
--Posted by Rick Palmer @ 02/17/2004 04:03 PM ESTWe use both in-house and offshore development here at the company that I'm working for.
We outsourced a major project, requiring a team of about 30 Developers/Project Managers in Vietnam, plus a staff of 3-4 here on the US side of the company to interact with the client (Us, in this case).
We also have a team (5-6 people) in-house of permanent employees here, dedicated to custom code changes, implementation, requirements gathering and verification, etc., for the outsourced project.
Compare that to the major product offering that I'm currently working, developed entirely in-house. Our team consists of 2 developers, 2 a Project Manager, and a QA person. We even lost 2 resources (had 4) and our delivery dates didn't skew too far, if any.
That's it.
We have less formal documentation (this is good and bad), but are able to react very quickly to business logic changes and correct the product accordingly (XP/RAD development).
Bottom line is you will always need a local implementation team that is highly technical, to understand the code, review, and maintain/tweak it to fit your business needs.
I don't see that need ever going away.
--Posted by Chip Mautz @ 07/23/2004 03:38 PM ESTHi!
I have participated to many offshore/international projects and all were great successes. I wrote down my thoughts about offshore dev on:
Analysing offshore development [2].
./the_mindstorm
--Posted by the_mindstorm @ 09/26/2004 05:59 PM EST